Formulation of a symbolic violence scale questionnaire: the importance of the epistemological, theoretical, and methodological construction of the object of study

Gray literature. Version 0 or preliminary or pretest of the symbolic violence scale in CFS/ME.

Objective: The objective of this article is to develop a version 0 or preliminary of the symbolic violence scale in chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME). Given the general lack in the international panorama of measurement instruments that provide standardized and comparable information on the social circumstances surrounding these patients and this disease, obtaining such a scale is urgent. Method: For this purpose, first the epistemological, theoretical, and methodological foundations of what, based on Pierre Bourdieu’s approaches, have been considered to be a good scale questionnaire, are presented. Secondly, based on previously existing qualitative materials, the relevant quantitative analyses were carried out (analysis of co-occurrences of keywords, multidimensional Mahalanobis-Fisher-Wilks tests, and finally analysis of bivariate contingency tables) in order to isolate the most significant keywords, which, together with the review of the qualitative materials and in accordance with the 3 proposed construction principles, should serve as the basis for the questions of the scale questionnaire to generate the identification of the people surveyed with the questions. Results: In this way, a scale questionnaire was obtained consisting of 46 items with indirect questions of objective facts based on concrete examples extracted from the analyses carried out. The last step was to summarize the scale items with ChatGPT 3.5 Turbo.